My Pixel Z1 showed up late last week and, after spending the weekend building it, I was finally able to get it on the track. Out of the box, the car drove better than I expected. With its narrow front and carbon chassis, I envisioned lots of traction rolling but the car was actually quite stable and easy to drive.
Is the Pixel Z1 on par with some of the racer oriented cars from companies like Atomic, Xbility or Reflex? Absolutely not. At the end of the day it is still a $99 car that is 95% plastic. For the casual club racer, this is fine but, to make the Pixel Z1 competitive, its going to take some considerable effort to get it up to the same level as a pro-level car.
The Packaging
Before we get to the specifics of the Pixel Z1, lets look at the packing the car comes in. Xpress has done a great job here, delivering retail packaging that will look great on the shelves of your local hobby store.
Inside the box, everything is packaged very well. I’m not normally a big fan of my plastic parts coming on sprues, but in this case, I’ll give Xpress a pass, since the quality of the parts themselves was quite good. I’ve heard of people getting screws that were a bit rusty but the ones in my kit were fine.
Xpress also includes four full sets of Yeah Racing wheels in the kit. You will probably want to start with the +1 or +2 offset wheels in front and the +2 or +3 offset wheels in the rear.
The Front End
I’m going to start at the front end of the car since I feel it exhibits some the best and worst attributes of the Pixel Z1. On a positive note, the front end is very simple. If you can setup a Mini-Z, you won’t have any issues here. Out of the box, you have 1 degree of camber and 0 degree of caster. The only way to change this is to get the aluminum upper arm mount, which adds a degree of caster.
The downside here is that with the front being primarily plastic, there is a lot of slop. I added a 0.1mm shim to the upper arms, which helped immensely there, but there is still a lot of slop out by the knuckles. People have suggested adding shims under the knuckles or flipping the kingpins altogether but I haven’t had a chance to try this yet.
The knuckles also tend to stick some on the kingpins. Xpress has already released a video, telling people to not tighten the axles down all the way. While this does seem to help some, the knuckles still aren’t as smooth as I’d like.
I like a lot of steering on my cars and I never felt like I had enough with the Pixel Z1. This is partly due to the servo horn that comes with the car. It is very short so you’re not going to get a lot of throw out of it. The aluminum horn that Xpress sells is taller though and the company claims that you will get more steering with it.
The Rear
Moving to the rear of the car, you have the top damper. For the most part, the damper is well designed. However, the metal shaft is too long. No matter how much you tighten it, there is just way too much droop.
I did notice that there was a small red spring on the front of the damper in some of the pictures on Xpress’ website. This spring is not included in the kit, nor is it shown in the manual, but something like this would help with the droop issues. In my case, I jammed a plastic nut on the shaft to take up the slack.
I also opted for a softer top spring. The one included in the kit is way too hard, especially for a lightweight car with a carbon chassis. Instead of absorbing the bumps on our track, the car wanted to hop. I replaced the spring with a white Atomic one and the car drove much better.
Another issue people are having is with the side spring perches. It can be hard to get the springs to on the perch and, even when you do, the connection isn’t very strong and they can fall off.
So far, my springs have stayed on, but, the issue I’m having, is that its hard to adjust the perches once they are on the car. Despite there being adjustment holes on the bottom of the car, there is no way to adjust them from there. I’ve considered using spring perches from another car but I haven’t found any that are a direct fit yet.
The Atomic MFX showed up this week and is currently on my workbench but I plan to continue my adventures with the Pixel Z1. I have graphite mount plates waiting to be put on and will be trying out many of the other upgrades once they are in stock.